A Lot of Catching Up

Wow. It's been over a month since my last post. Bad blogger. Bad! Can a super cute photo of the boy put me back your good graces?


Excellent. Now that we're pals again, let's get to the catching up part of this post!

You may notice that Ethan is sporting a new, shorter 'do. We took him for his first cut since the hair pulling incident. We've been waiting for the hair to grow back enough to justify a trip to the salon. He hasn't pulled any hair since back in April, and I *think* we're in the clear and successfully broke the habit. Whew!

My new job has me out of the door before Ethan wakes up, and home about an hour before he goes to bed. Well, that is if I put him to bed on time... I've been letting him stay up past his bedtime quite frequently to steal a bit more time with him at night. It's made our weekend time together so precious, and we've been trying to have as many adventures as we can.

One recent adventure was taking Ethan camping for the first time. We went with our amazing friends, the Hokes, who had their little one in tow as well. After setting up camp we took a hike in the woods with the kiddos and the pups. Ethan loved running around in the woods playing with sticks and rocks and dirt and bugs. Though we intended to have him sleep in a tent on his own, we ended up setting up the Pack 'n Play in the back of the SUV due to 1) lots and lots of bedtime protest in a crowded campground, and 2) the fact that it was much warmer and safer in the car than it was in the tent.

The windows were cracked, don't worry.

All in all, it was a pretty fantastic and successful experiment! Exhausting and dirt-caked, but successful!

Another exciting event was Ryan's recent gallery exhibition. He showed pieces from his Tasteful Torment series to a crowd of more than 500 art enthusiasts! It was such a great night, and a wonderful opportunity to catch up with some friends that we haven't seen in way too long. You can read an interview about him and his work here, and check out the full series on his website here.

Coming up this week is a visit from Ethan's Pa-Pa. We've planned a lot of activities, which includes hitting Fleet Week in San Francisco, going to a pumpkin patch, and taking Ethan to the zoo. I'm off from work for the duration of my dad's visit, and am so excited that I'll get to join in on all of the weekday fun!

Now if I can just remember to post about the aforementioned adventures in a timely fashion...

Mondays with Ethan

Now that I'm back to work five days a week, Ethan and Ryan have a lot more guy time together. They've been getting into all kinds of trouble adventures.


Days with Dada are SO MUCH FUN!

What I Did on My Summer Vacation

- I spent a ton of time with my little family (I only worked a total of TWELVE hours this summer! Not per week - total!)

- I spent not enough time with my extended family (This is due both to being ridiculously far away and being ridiculously busy. Keep reading.)

- I learned that we would be moving to a new house - a beautiful, mid-century modern Eichler house (...and not to a new state, as we discovered in the eleventh hour. Seriously, our bags were practically packed for Texas. Oh, but to that point...)

- I learned that there's no such thing as packing ahead of time when you have a toddler. (Unless your family lives in the area and can spend some QT with the cutie, while you tackle the packing. But I suppose I've already addressed this in an earlier bullet point.)

- I witnessed countless selfless acts from some pretty incredible, super fantastic friends (Friends who will stay up until two in the morning helping you pack and move and paint - several days in a row, friends who will drive over ninety minutes one way to help with heavy lifting and baby wrangling, friends who will wake up early and meet you at your old place at 6am to help you clean before the move-out inspection, and friends who recognize that the process of moving will suck the life out of you and offer to babysit so that you can recharge. I love, love, love each and every one of you!)

- I did more painting than I've ever done, collectively, in my entire life (We painted the entire house a cool-toned gray color, with a great deal of help from the aforementioned amazing friends! It was a lot of work, but definitely worth it. The previous color was a terrible shade of peachy yellow.)

- I did a lot of celebrating (Ryan's grad school graduation, his thirty-somethingth birthday, our sixth wedding anniversary, Ethan's second birthday...)

- I learned how to keep my house immaculately clean and showroom-ready at all times, and I have the pictures to prove it (Or, maybe we did a super duper cleaning job before Ryan took pics of our new place - and staged the dining room table. Guess you'll have to drop by unannounced and see if the table is set when you arrive to find out the truth!)






I start my new job on Monday, marking the end of what I think was a pretty fantastic summer. It was fast and furious, and not always (or hardly ever) relaxing, but it was perfect.

Birthday Boy Turns Two!

“A two-year old is kind of like having a blender, but you don't have a top for it.” ~ Jerry Seinfeld

We put our little blender on full blast today for a cupcake decorating celebration. Luckily, we had the foresight to hold our little fiesta outside, with easy access to hose everything (and everyone...) down after we finished our fun. I thought that if I turned him loose with a few bottles of sprinkles, a plate full of cupcakes, and a tub of frosting, Ethan would decorate all of the cupcakes and then eat one.

Two years into this whole parenting thing, and I still have unrealistic expectations like that? Sheesh. Here's what actually happened:

1) Ethan dumps half a bottle of sprinkles on one cupcake.


2) He begins to make frantic "Ahhhhhhhh, ahhhhhhhh" sounds with his mouth wide open, signaling that he wants to do a little less decorating and a little more eating.

3) Ethan quickly scarfs down a cupcake, and sweetly smiles before asking for another one.


4) Mama of course lets him have another one.


5) After he finishes his second treat, Ethan proceeds to take a bite out of or lick frosting off of each of the remaining cupcakes.

It was the perfect low-key celebration, followed by a lot of running around the yard (and a huge sugar crash before bedtime)!

New Post: Coming Soon!

No, we haven't dropped off the face of the earth, we've just been super busy moving to a new house. Blog update soon, complete with pictures of our new humble abode, I promise!

Picking Peaches

Where, oh where, oh where is Ethan?

Where, oh where, oh where is Ethan?

Where, oh where, oh where is Ethan?
Way down yonder in the peach tree patch.

Picking up peaches, put 'em in a basket.

Picking up peaches, put 'em in a basket.

Picking up peaches, put 'em in a basket.
Way down yonder in the peach tree patch.

Choo Choo!

One or two weekends per month, the Walnut Creek Model Railroad Society opens their doors to the public for a train show. We've been meaning to go for a while, but just recently got around to it.


Not knowing exactly how to describe what we saw there, I'll let some of the info from their website do the talking. "The Walnut Creek Model Railroad Society is proud to be one of the most mountainous layouts, and one of the largest exclusively HO scale lines in the United States."

(I have no idea what an HO scale line is, but I'm impressed!)

"At our shows we invite you to visit a permanent 54' x 32' layout with over 4,300 feet of hand laid track on 175,000 individual ties with more than 340 turnouts all enclosed in a building specially designed and constructed by the club members. Mountains rise to 10 feet above the lowest track level, and the railroad may be viewed from all sides. Under normal operating conditions it requires about 45 minutes for one train to complete a single circuit of the mainline."


So, in a nutshell, in the world of railroad enthusiasts their setup is a big deal. They had a whole mission control thing going on, with ten or so guys running all of the trains. During the show the sun set, a thunderstorm showered the show floor with actual sprinkles of water from the ceiling, and the theme from 2001: A Space Odyssey blared over the speakers when the sun rose again. It's not a hobby for these guys, it's a lifestyle.


Ethan thought it was pretty exciting, and pointed wildly at all of the trains going in and out of tunnels, around corners, and through city streets. He was a bit frustrated when we wouldn't let him pick up the train cars, and the thunderstorm really freaked him out, but all in all it was a good time!